Ubuntu should add default support for exFAT partitions

[Andrea Colangelo]

If a USB pendrive containing an exFAT partition is connected, Ubuntu can't mount the partition. Test has been done on a Vivid amd64 live system using today's daily ISO.

Steps to reproduce:
1- Insert an USB pendrive containing an exFAT partition
2- The partition is not automatically mounted
3- Trying to manually mount the partition via the terminal shows this output:
    mount: unknown filesystem type 'exfat'

Steps to fix the issue:
1- Install packages exfat-fuse and exfat-utils

exFAT pendrives are more and more common in newer devices, and this issue is not easily fixable by the average John Doe. We should add the two packages above to the seeds and grant default support to our users.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1434603/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

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[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Nathaniel Homier (mechamechanism)]

This bug is still present in 15.10.

[kirstin (schoenheit76)]

Also, it would be cool to have default support already in initrd.gz - as already mentioned earlier, large thumb-drives become more and more common, exFat is the most common choice for these large drives. To boot from exFat drives one needs to hack the needed libs and binaries into the the initrd.gz as described in http://borgernet.com/blog/14/booting-ubuntu-isos-on-exfat/

Having this integrated as default (if legally possible) would be... visionary

[Zeioth (zeioth)]

+1